5 February 2025
As a doctor in concrete technology and a working product development engineer, Arun sees sustainable concrete as much more than green mix bags from Bunnings and LinkedIn carousel posts boasting carbon-cut percentages.
“In the past few years in concrete,” Arun said, “The focus has been on environmental sustainability. But in reality, concrete sustainability has 3 pillars—social, economic and environmental.”
Given concrete is the second most used material in the world after water—or rather, as Arun points out, “the third after TikTok videos”—this expanded notion of sustainability is warranted. In Australia alone, we produce enough premix to fill 18 MCGs every year, so concrete has huge economic significance.
“Climate change is real and we need to address it—no way around it—and the environmental issue of cement and concrete is one of the major drivers, contributing to 8% of the global carbon emissions worldwide,” he said.
“But we need to address concrete’s environmental footprint in a way that doesn’t disrupt the balance of the economy, because in pure economic sense, we are massively borrowing against the future of our children and grandchildren to finance our present needs. It is our responsibility to leave them a world where there’s more prosperity than we have today.”
For Arun, social sustainability enters the equation because the concrete sector has a huge labour force, affecting people’s livelihoods and health.
“It also includes the social responsibility to educate about concrete best practices, and to reduce health and safety risks facing workers.”
There’s no doubt Arun’s views on sustainable concrete have been shaped by his experiences working across the sometimes chalk-and-cheese seeming fields of academia and industry.
He did his PhD at Swinburne University on developing an ultra-high performance concrete for 3D printing applications and was supervised by veteran concrete researcher Professor Jay Sanjayan.
Arun described 3D concrete printing as “a twofold idea—it’s about developing a new type of concrete for a new way of building.”
“The first idea is to develop concrete that is very durable, strong and low slump. And the second idea is that 3D printing is an up-and-coming innovative way of depositing this low slump concrete, removing formwork from the equation to reduce waste.”
After his PhD, Arun continued to pursue a research career for several years. He then joined Advanced Precast (Aust), a market-leading manufacturer of concrete precast elements, where he is now applying his expertise in innovation to develop new products.
Despite the construction industry’s reputation for being slow to adopt new innovations due to its conservative and risk-averse nature, Arun sees a burgeoning interest in sustainable concrete… and some challenges to overcome.
“There’s a strong demand for new trials and low carbon products, and above all, there is a need for proven backing for these innovations. The real gap lies in the standards—or lack thereof—to support these new innovations.”
With the global commitment to reach net-zero by 2050 fast approaching, Arun stresses the need to put industry in the lead to help get innovations out of the research lab and onto the market.
“It’s very much a common opinion in the industry that researchers, generally speaking, sometimes focus more on producing highly cited articles rather than addressing industry needs,” Arun said.
“I think the academia is focusing on what industry could achieve in 10 or 15 years, whereas industry is focused on what needs to be achieved tomorrow if not today.”
“But SmartCrete is one of the strongest advocates for bridging this gap, ensuring researchers collaborate and tackle the challenges that benefit the industry.”
“There is a current upward trajectory in the university sector to invest more in the entrepreneurial aspect of research. And the gap will likely be shortened with programs like Smartcrete.”
As staggering as it is exciting, the sheer number of concrete R&D projects competing around the world include our home-grown intelligent digital twin IoT maintenance system and low carbon concrete made from calcined clay.
While keeping an eye on such diverse concrete technologies, Arun simply can’t look past ultra-high performance concrete as one of his top picks for transformational impact.
“Ultra-high performance concrete is expensive and it has a lot of cement in it too, but it’s about 10 times more durable and 3-5 times stronger than traditional concrete, so we can redesign concrete elements to have size efficiency—meaning we use less concrete in total,” he said.
“I think the most important form of sustainability is a durable product. So if the product lasts 200 years, even though it’s designed for 100 years, that’s massive right?”
Another innovation Arun considers promising is geopolymer concrete, which has lower embodied carbon than traditional concrete and recycles waste materials like fly ash and slag.
“It’s been studied for years and has been refined over time. And we have seen massive projects with geopolymer concrete, such as Toowoomba airport in Queensland, which is very adaptable to other applications. This week, a Melbourne start-up Curvecrete produced some temporary structures made of geopolymer concrete for the Australian Open.”
In keeping with SmartCrete’s raison d’être of empowering research collaborations for real-world applications, the community of practice creates opportunities for players across the sector to get together and share ideas and collaborate on solutions.
Arun expects that during his tenure as chair, the community will show that concrete research and development “is a competitive space.”
“It will be about bringing industry together and showing them that someone else is doing this thing, and this can be done, and this is not a moonshot target. We are not talking about space travelling, we are talking about what can be done in your next project.”
Before becoming chair of the community, Arun himself was a participant, and continues to find real value in exploring competitor’s innovations.
“At Advanced Precast where I work,” Arun said, “We are interested in what they are doing in a Swinburne University project because that innovation is easily adopted in the industry. The community of practice will create a discussion around how others can do it, what are the benefits, and what’s possible.”
That LTE Structures and Swinburne University project on precast concrete building cores is slated for discussion in September, at our Community of Practice (Engineered Solutions), chaired by Olivia Wu.
In the meantime, Arun’s Community of Practice (Sustainable Concrete) will occur every 3 months, with outgoing chair Olivia Alexis handing over the reins at the first session this February.
Sign up below for our Community of Practice (Sustainable Concrete) – Beneficial Use of Reclaimed Paint in Concrete on Feb 18th. Or view the 2025 schedule.